Unlocked
Poets
Ali Cobby Eckermann, Lionel Fogarty, Philip Hammial, Gareth Jenkins, Gayle Kennedy, Dyllwinia Poets, John Morony Poets, MC Trey, Lindsay Tuggle, Rob Wilson
Poems
Satin Pleats, Ralph, Overhead Transperancy, Cracks, Haiku, Darling, Translation, Lustrous, Fold In, River Poem, Our Encoutner, Frost Bites, Street Scene, 1st day in Library outside the window!, Slow Down, The Angry Voice, The Other Way, Last Embrace, Hello Again, A Room with a View, Leaving Home!, The Winter Dusk, Rendezvous, A New Page, Shower of Sound, When the Pen Hits the Paper, Deep Breath, Image, Last Night, Dreaming of Death, Baby Boy, The View from the Swiss Grand, Art of War, Caties, Black Duck, Letter Home, Soldier, FREEDOM, Life on Pause..., Me/You, Subsidance, Swirl of Laughter, Dark Time, The Stars, Jumanji, Life in Jail, The Pieces, The Northern Road, Confused Like Horses
Online Store
Visit our online store to purchase publications and materials from this project. The Red Room Company is a not-for-profit organisation. All funds raised support the ongoing work of The Red Room Company.
About
Unlocked is an innovative educational programme developed and run by The Red Room Company in collaboration with educational staff from NSW Correctional Centres, which unlocks the potential of inmates through the transformative power of poetry. Australian poets are taken into the centres to run intensive writing workshops, working with the students on every stage of the writing process, from the initial exercises and experimentations, through the editing and rewriting process, to recording, performing and publishing their work in a professionally designed print anthology. Piloted in Sydney in 2010, the project has now entered its fourth year.
Unlocked has offered an exciting opportunity for The Red Room Company to really explore the social value of poetry and creative expression; its transformative and regenerative qualities. The project was been developed in collaboration with Corrections NSW Audiovisual Unit and education staff, 2SER's Jailbreak radio show, Blood & Thunder Publishing Concern.
Project Outcomes
Unlocked offers a range of potential outcomes and benefits for the students involved. Through Unlocked, we work both with the vocational education providers working in NSW Correctional Centres, as well as education providers such as ACE Community Colleges, an Adult Education provider and Registered Training Organisation which runs accredited courses in the Balund-a Project. Through Unlocked, students can come back into the community with recognised qualifications, as a part of the study that they have completed inside. In this way the value of the project is not just in helping students to come to terms with emotions, past experiences or relationships, but to build practical literacy and communication skills, and the confidence to apply them.
Recent Projects
In 2012 we focused mainly on Indigenous inmates. Indigenous Australians are shockingly overrepresented in Australian prisons, and in recognition of this, we have begun working closely with Indigenous poets such as Lionel Fogarty and Ali Cobby Eckermann to offer a program that offers a potentially transformative experience both in terms of cultural and educational engagement. In 2012 we worked with three different centres, Dillwynia, Balund-a and South Coast Correctional Centre. Dillwynia, west of Sydney, was one of the first centres to run the project in 2012, and this time we returned with poets Dr. Gareth Jenkins and Ali Cobby Eckermann. Ali's sharing of her stories of loss an reconnection with her cultural heritage sparked a real chord with the students, and the poems produced were highly moving. Often devastating, sometimes inspiring. Next Lionel Fogarty and Johanna Featherstone headed out to Balund-a, a residential diversionary program near Tabulam in regional NSW. Students worked closely with Lionel And Jo, and became fascinated with Lionel's use of Bundjalung dialect in his poems, and staff at the centre helped us to track down a local man, Lewis Walker, who speaks several local languages and dialects, to translate some of the student poems into language. At South Coast Correctional Centre near Nowra, Lionel and Jo again visited, this time with MC and spoken-word performer Nick Bryant-Smith aka Solo. A culturally diverse group eventually came together to translate each others poems and record a group rap together. Each project produced a print and audio anthology, available through our online store.
